Maybe, Daniel surmised later, a more well-planned escape might have led to a faster exit. Perhaps doing something to conceal the injured and unconscious hoplites they had left strewn around the corridor would have delayed the alarms, and in turn led to fewer patrols and roaming pairs of Minotaurs between them and the flagship’s glider bays. At the time, though, he was simply relieved that Bra’tac had turned up when he had. Daniel could have foreseen a long stay in a dark place had the old Jaffa not been tracking them.
Still, it had to be said, the escape was a mess. Hardly SG-1’s finest hour. And by the time they had discovered the monitoring chamber, the first stage of Hera’s assault on Neheb-Kau was already reaching its end.
There had been two hoplites manning the chamber. Both had fallen prey to Jack’s accuracy with a zat gun before they could raise an alarm, and were now slumped in a side locker. Daniel had heard them start to awaken once already, and been forced to open the locker just enough to stun the pair again. He wondered how many more times he would have to do it before the way was clear enough for them to leave.
Still, the diversion had not been completely without its uses. Although all three of them would rather have been flying down to find Sam and Teal’c themselves, Bra’tac had suggested using the communications board to search for any mention of them on Hera’s comms network.
It was probably the most sensible thing to do, although it still wrenched at Daniel to not be in a ship and racing to find his friends. They were so close, he thought. After so many light-years, after almost giving up hope so many times, they were only an orbit away.
And yet, for now, it was a distance that he couldn’t possibly cross.
Jack was at the hatch, watching the corridor. “Come on, Bra’tac. There’s got to be something.”
“There is much, O’Neill. Hera’s communication system has access to more channels than any I have ever known. The accursed woman listens to everything!”
“It’s probably one of the ways she keeps power,” said Daniel. “Most Goa’uld are all about brute strength, terror tactics. Rule by fear, you know.” He sat down at the control board, next to Bra’tac. “I think Hera rules by leverage.”
“She is legendary for it,” replied the Jaffa. “It is said that while Apophis will stab a man in the heart and laugh, Hera will convince him to stab
himself
and laugh!”
“She’s a sneaky minx, all right.” Jack glanced back. “Anything yet?”
Daniel saw Bra’tac’s expression darken. “Hey,” he said quickly. “Maybe I could try.”
Bra’tac took his hand from the metal block. “The process requires great concentration.”
“I can do concentration.”
“There are many separate channels. Focusing on any one can induce fatigue, or great pain.”
“Okay…” Daniel held his hand nervously over the block.
“Occasionally death.”
“Maybe I should leave it to the expert.” He moved his hand away, but Bra’tac reached out, faster than he could follow, and grabbed his wrist.
“Death is a rare result,” he smiled, and put Daniel’s hand onto the metal.
Instantly, his head was full of voices.
Daniel could hear dozens of separate speakers, so many layered one over the other that he could barely follow any of them; Jaffa voices, using the fluid, part-Greek tongue of Hera and her subjects.
Many of the voices were shouting. Some of them cursed. A few screamed, although those didn’t tend to last very long. And occasionally he would hear the voice of Hera herself, deep and clipped and honeyed, exhorting her pilots and berating her enemies.
It was an insane sea of radio chatter, filling his skull, the living essence of the battle raging below them. It was the sound of people dying, in the cold and the dark.
How anyone could stand to listen to it was a mystery to Daniel: already it had set his head spinning. He lifted his hand, letting silence wash into him. “Oh my God… That’s…”
Jack was looking at him from across the chamber. “You okay?”
“I think so.” He shook himself. “Sorry. Just a bit intense, that’s all…”
He got up. As he did so, an edge of memory caught at him, like a fragment of dream. In amongst all that babble, a word that made no sense. “Why would they be talking about swords?”
“Swords?” Bra’tac shrugged. “I do not know.”
“Do Jaffa use swords?”
“Some do, in close combat. It is an old skill, mostly forgotten.”
“Okay.” Daniel went back to the viewport. The first transport was taking off, the air beneath it rippling with heat distortion as the slablike vessel slid towards its launch chute. “One of the voices was talking about a khepesh, that’s all.”
“That’s a sword, right?”
He glanced across the chamber at Jack. “Egyptian, yeah. Kind of like…” He drew in their air, an elongated G. “I guess the word means something in Goa’uld, too.”
“Indeed it does,” said Bra’tac. “Be silent, both of you.”
He placed his hand back onto the slab, and closed his eyes. A few seconds later he opened them again and smiled widely. “There have been reports of a Goa’uld fast yacht in combat above the planet’s surface, only minutes ago. Apparently, it was pursuing a Khepesh before it broke off and allowed its escort of death gliders to take over.”
“Hold on…” Jack checked the corridor again, then ducked back through the hatch and closed it. “A yacht chasing a sword?”
“Yacht as in private starship. Could be Neheb-Kau,” said Daniel. “Which means he’s making a break for it and leaving his crew to take the heat.”
“Figures.”
“The Khepesh… Is that a class of ship, as well?”
Bra’tac nodded. “A short-range reconnaissance vessel. Fast, but fragile.”
“Doesn’t ring any bells,” said Jack.
“They are outmoded, and seldom used,” Bra’tac replied. “I do not believe Hera’s fleet contains such craft. And if Neheb-Kau was attacking one of his own fleet, does it not suggest the vessel was stolen?”
Daniel grinned. “That sounds like Sam, all right. Can you find it?”
“Not directly. But I can set a communications channel to access only that class of vessel.” He took his hand from the slab and began pressing glyphs on the control board. A few moments later, the angular metal frame above it filled with light, a flat panel of holographic data.
Hieroglyphs and Greek characters coursed down it. A holding pattern. “Can you hail them?” Daniel asked.
“I am attempting to. There is some interference…”
“What if it’s not them?” said Jack. “Just say ‘Sorry, wrong number’ and hang up?”
“In essence,” Bra’tac replied.
He touched a glyph, and Teal’c’s wide, golden face filled the panel.
Jack’s face split in a huge grin. “Teal’c, you son of a gun! We’ve been looking all over for ya!”
“It is good to see you, O’Neill.”
“Likewise! Is Carter there?”
“Indeed. Daniel Jackson, Master Bra’tac.” He tipped his head. “I am pleased that you are here also.”
“We kept your room just how you left it,” said Daniel, smiling. “So where are you?”
“That is rather difficult to explain.”
“Well, give it a shot!” Jack glanced back over his shoulder. “We’re using someone else’s phone, and she’s gonna get cranky if we run up too much of a charge…”
“Major Carter can tell you better than I.” A smile played over his lips. “I have already mentioned how pleased I am to see you all, have I not?”
“You have,” said Daniel. “But trust me, we’re not going to get tired of hearing it.”
The screen blinked, and Sam’s face appeared. “Hey,” she said.
She looked frighteningly tired, and there was something in her eyes Daniel didn’t like at all. A haunted, hunted expression. His smile faded. “Sam? Where are you?”
“In the planet,” she replied. As she said it, she looked back over her shoulder, above her head, as if keeping watch for enemies.
Jack squinted at the screen. “Ah, don’t you mean ‘on’?”
“No sir. We’re under the surface.”
“You’re buried?”
“No… We can fly out any time, sir.”
“Then put your foot down and get the hell out of Dodge.”
She shook her head. “Colonel, I’m sorry, but we’ve got a new problem. What we found down here changes everything…”
“Sam,” Daniel said warily. “You’re, ah, scaring us a little here… What have you found?”
“Well, to put it simply…” She took a deep breath. “This isn’t really a planet. It’s an egg, and it’s going to hatch into about a billion Ash Eaters.”
It took several minutes for Sam to explain exactly what she had found under the nameless planet’s surface. Even when she had shown them some of the data she had captured using the scout’s reconnaissance systems, it was hard to grasp.
All that was really clear was that something had to be done about it.
At first, Jack had been unable to see the urgency. “Carter, I hear you. Hollow planet, lots of Ash Eaters, black hole. I get it. But seriously, what’s to stop us bugging out and leaving them in peace?”
“Sir, I don’t think you quite understand. The singularity isn’t there just to give the planet gravity. It’s been evaporating slowly over tens of thousands of years. The Ash Eaters have been dormant inside the planet for all that time, just ticking over on the Hawking radiation it gives off as it shrinks.”
“So?”
“So, they knew it was going to evaporate at a measureable rate. Sir, Neheb-Kau did get something right. He told me that the Ash Eaters were once a highly advanced race, and the evidence is right here. But they didn’t eat their own civilization and then each other until there was only one left. They retreated, voluntarily, into this giant egg, and then went into a dormant state.”
“I guess they must have left one outside.” Daniel rubbed the bridge of his nose. He felt as though his spectacles had been on his face for a year, grinding through to the bone. He wondered if the others were as tired as he was. “You know, it’s not often we come across one of these ancient legends that isn’t true. Normally they pan out, you know?”
“Maybe the Ash Eaters set up the lie themselves.”
“Okay, Carter.” Jack spread his hands. “Simple answer: what happens if we just leave?”
“Simple answer? Worst case scenario is that the gamma radiation released when the Ha’tak reaches the singularity wakes the Ash Eaters, or even just some of them. A lot of rock went down with it, and the surface is unstable now. There’s a kind of suppression field running through the crust to keep the atmosphere from falling into the planet, but that’s being stressed too, and it could fail any time.”
“Best case?” he said hopefully.
“The singularity reaches a natural flashpoint in about thirty years.”
“How far away are we from Earth?”
“Not far enough. Sir, I’ve seen one of these things in action. You can’t stop them. They will feed off any attack you subject them to. Hit them with a hammer or a bullet and they’ll just absorb the kinetic energy. Drop a nuke on them and they’ll suck up the fireball.”
“Okay, I get it.”
“I did some calculations, based on the absorption rates of the one that took out Neheb-Kau’s ship. At full strength, a dozen Ash Eaters could shut down the
sun
.”
“I said I get it!” He turned away from the screen. “Oh man. Using a black hole as an alarm clock. Now I’ve heard it all.”
“Yeah, and it’s going to go off early,” Daniel muttered. “Is this our fault? I can’t even remember.”
“Colonel,” Sam went on, “I think there is a solution. But right now I have no idea how we could bring it off.”
“Spit it out.”
“If we could somehow bring enough destructive power to bear on the planet, in a precisely calculated way, we could send the Ash Eaters into their own black hole.”
“Would that destroy them?” Bra’tac asked.
“I’m not sure. But at the very least it would trap them at the event horizon. And the extra mass of the planet would give us a couple of centuries to come up with a more permanent solution.”
Daniel threw a glance at Jack. “Hey, Sam? How much destructive power are we talking about?”
“That’s the problem. A lot. The planet is held stable around the black hole by gravitational tethers — the towers. We’d need to take some of those out, and they are
big
. I think the entire nuclear arsenal of Earth might make a dent in one, but I can’t guarantee it.” She blinked. “Daniel, what are you smiling about?”
“Because we know someone who’s got a big drill.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Auger,” Jack said. “Hera’s toy. She said it could punch a hole a thousand kilometers into solid rock. You reckon that could do the trick?”
“Ah, it sounds good, sir. But how are you going to get her to let you use it?”
“Well, she fears the Ash Eater as much as anyone,” said Jack. “It’s why she came out here, to drill a hole and bury it. If she learns there are millions of them…”
“Getting Hera’s attention without inviting death will be difficult,” warned Bra’tac. “Neheb-Kau has escaped her, the creature she fears most has destroyed one of her starships, and you have evaded capture aboard her own flagship.”
“He’s right,” said Daniel grimly. “If we set foot on the pel’tak she’ll have a Minotaur on us before we can say word one.”
Jack made a face. “I really don’t like those guys.”
“I’m sure they speak highly of you, too.”
“We would never reach the command deck,” Bra’tac offered. “Hera has ordered her guards to shoot on sight. Unless we make our case first, we cannot succeed.”
“Pythia,” said Daniel. “She seemed pretty level-headed. Bra’tac, could you get a message through to Hera’s Oracle?”
“I can.”
Jack folded his arms and puffed out a long breath. “Okay, let’s do it. But I don’t like going cap in hand to these people, not one damn bit.”
The Oracle’s reaction to Bra’tac’s message was swifter than anyone had expected. Within less than five minutes there was a flash of voltage from the hatch controls, and the door slid aside. Hoplites shouldered in, staff weapons already leveled and open.